Update on Writing a Second Novel (Patreon)

I’ve been quiet this month because I’ve been focused on trying to finish my second novel. I was lucky to have two weeks off in December that really let me knock out various tasks. I had wanted to share a new novel chapter this month, but I’ve been so focused with drafting, I haven’t gone back and done any revisions.

So first, before I get into the details of what I’ve been doing, I want to apologize that new material for this month isn’t ready yet, and it won’t go up until early February. I’ve just not sat down and revised the next chapter yet.

The Fucking Around Part of the Writing Process

If you go back and look through Patreon, I started writing The Blood of Life back in 2021, before I even finished Scars of the Golden Dancer. I outlined the book back in June at a writing retreat and even wrote a draft of the intro. I uploaded four chapters in 2022, and then one further chapter in August of 2023. The next chapter I need to post, Chapter 6, I wrote back in 2022, and got feedback on from my writing group back then. I’ve just never gone back over it to revise it.

Chapter 7 was completed back in September of last year and was reviewed by my writing group on October 1. For a book with chapters running a little over 3,000 words this isn’t a lot of content. Back in July of last year, I finally managed to drag the book over 25,000 words.

(Me on Twitter)

And even with the chapter finished in October, I can tell you I was not feeling that upbeat about the book.

(Me on BlueSky)

The Finding Out Part of the Writing Process

In the spirit of getting moving, I tried to do NaNoWriMo last November. For those not familiar with NaNo as it’s also called, the goal is to write 50,000 words in a month. While I made some progress on the book, I also spent a lot of time working on a short story for the Furry Historical Fiction Society. My issue with writing a novel isn’t that I don’t write words, but I’m great for getting distracted with short stories. "Binding Spirits," my October Patreon story, is one of those ideas that I grabbed and just ran with, instead of working on The Blood of Life. Hell, Scars of the Golden Dancer took me 11 years to write and edit because I kept jumping into short stories.

One of my writing goals is to release a book a year. I pulled this out last year by doing Gnoll Tales, where I’d again written a bunch of short stories instead of working on a novel. NaNoWriMo taught me I couldn’t just sit and crank out large word counts day after day. I’ve tried to other challenges, like write 30,000 in a month, but I’ve fallen short of these lofty goals all the times I've attempted it except once. Plus, I violated the outline with The Blood of Life, so I have a lot of difficulty just cranking out large word counts on the book.

However, I’ve done something different recently: I’ve embraced being a persistence predator. Instead of writing 1,000 words or more a day, I focus on a goal of averaging 400 words a day. I can write 400 words when I know what I need to write in twenty to thirty minutes. On days where I struggle, it takes me an hour and a half, but it’s still reasonable to do. There’s nothing to say I can’t write more words either, but if I force myself to get those 400 words down, I feel successful. Hell, this post is way more than 400 words and I’m writing it in a single sitting! So, while tonight’s words aren’t for the novel, I still hit my writing goal.

Combined with time off last month from work, and determination this month, Blood of Life, as of writing this post, has hit 49,802 words. Currently I’m working on Chapter 15. I’ve made a surprising amount of progress in the last two months on this book. By focusing on smaller chunks, even when I’m stuck, I’ve found I can answer the what’s next question and hit that word count. I’m also now sketched out the end of the book, which I expect to be 17 chapters when I’m done.

I don’t know how long editing will take on this book, but if things go smoothly, I might have it out and done for Anthrocon this year. However, I don’t want to rush the editing process. Last summer I had originally forecast I’d have The Blood of Life out for FurFest 2024, and I see no reason why I won’t hit that goal. I’ve already started the process of getting it a cover, and so for the parts of the book my writing group has read have reviewed well.

One thing I wanted to get out of the process of writing this book was to improve my process for writing long form fiction. I had originally scoped the book out to be novella, but it has managed to grow into a short novel. While I’m not thrilled it’s taken me so long to wrestle this project to completion, it’s on track to have a production time of three to three and a half years, which is vastly improved compared to the eleven years it took me to write Scars of the Golden Dancer. As for writing the sequel to that, I’ve got some idea now on how long that will take me. It will be a long process, but I better understand what I’m capable of doing now and how to write books like this without burning out.